1. The Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to voice message systems. More particularly, embodiments of the invention relate to systems and methods for delivering voice messages by providing a visual or audible representation of each message to a user that enables a user to directly access a voice message.
2. The Relevant Technology
Subscribers of voice messaging services typically receive visual notifications of new messages waiting on their communication device. These notifications are often limited to an indication of the number of messages that are waiting in a subscriber's inbox. The subscriber may be entirely unaware of who sent the message, when it was sent, and in particular, what the message is about.
Furthermore, listening to and learning the content of a voice message often requires establishing a network connection to the message server, a process which can take several seconds or more to complete, and which often requires navigating through the message server's menu before finally being able to listen to a message. In addition, the use of a conventional voice mail system requires the user to access his or her messages sequentially in the order they were received. Even when a user is listening to previously played and/or saved messages, the user is typically required to skip messages until the desired message is located. Also, conventional voice mail systems do not provide a way for users to determine what a message is about or even who it is from until the content of each message is played. Thus, in order to reach and play a desired message, the user may be required to listen to a part of every received message in the queue prior to reaching the desired message.
One solution to the lack of instantaneous access to voice messages is to automatically deliver each message in its entirety to a communication device while connected with a communication network, as can be done with Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) messages. For example, when an MMS message is created using an MMS client, it is submitted to a home MMS Center (MMSC), and then sent by the home MMSC to the recipient MMSC. The recipient MMSC sends a notification to the recipient's wireless device, and the MMS client on the recipient's wireless device automatically retrieves the MMS message from the recipient MMSC after receiving the notification. MMS voice messages, besides being delivered automatically, have the additional advantage of being stored locally on both the sending and receiving wireless device so that either the sender or the receiver can forward the voice message to other devices and have instant access to the voice message as long as the message is stored on the users' device.
Automatically delivering each message eliminates any need to establish a network connection after the recipient device alerts the recipient to the receipt of the message, because the message has already been stored locally. However, communication devices have limited storage capacity, so the automatic delivery and local storage of numerous voice messages, whether voice mail messages or MMS messages, is limited by the storage capacity of the wireless device.
Further, MMS systems do not address the issues related to the fact that different voice mail systems typically have varying capabilities. For example, people often have multiple voice mail systems (e.g., home voice mail, work voice mail, cellular voice mail, etc.), and the ability to listen to messages on a particular voice mail system requires the user to call in to that specific system and then navigate the menu system of that system in order to retrieve any voice mail messages stored therein. A person who has multiple voice mail systems is typically unable to retrieve all messages from multiple systems simultaneously, but is required to access each system independently. Furthermore, even if the user's voice mail systems forward the messages to a single messaging system, the user is still required to navigate menus and can only access the voice messages sequentially, in the order they were received. As a result, the user may spend substantial time looking for specific messages and is often unaware of the content of those messages until they are located in the queue and played.
Accordingly, there currently exists a need in the art for improving voice message systems and providing more information about received voice messages to users.